This is the Only Level
by Evil Cosmic Triplets
Summary: Ethan smells irresistible, and something like compulsion takes over Benny's mind. He's completely unable to think straight, could it be sex pollen, or something else? Inspired by the game of the same name, and the suggestion that I write Benny and Ethan.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and no profit, monetary or otherwise, is being made through the writing of this. I also do not own the flash game that this was inspired by.

**A/N:** inspired by csi_sanders, and the flash game, This is the Only Level (Yahoo Games is where I played it - only to level ten; and then I started writing - Armor Games is the game maker). She gave me a pairing to work with, and then got me kind of hooked on the game. Instead of playing it to the end, I decided to write about it.

**Warning/A/N: **This is written in present tense (on purpose), and uses a lot of repetition (also on purpose - the game does tend to repeat itself, after all). Features kissing, and some creepiness...smelling feet, for example. Not meant to be taken overly seriously. It's also kind of cheesy, and fluffy. I hope that if you read, you like.

* * *

"So...there's really only one level to this game, and you play it over and over and over and over and -"

Ethan cuts Benny off with a raised eyebrow. Nothing else. Oh, and a single finger pressed to his lips, which he is most definitely _not _tempted to lick right now.

"Yes." Ethan turns back to the game, brow scrunching as he concentrates on moving the elephant from one pedestal to the next, making sure that the tiny elephant does not fall onto the upraised spikes.

Benny leans in close, just to watch, because he's curious. This close, he can actually smell Ethan's sweat. Benny blinks, leans in closer, takes a tentative sniff, because Ethan smells kind of nice. For a boy.

"Uh, do you mind?" Ethan asks, moving a little to the left, and incidentally sending his tiny elephant onto a bed of spikes. The elephant becomes a ghost, which is kind of cool, and another one appears in its place. Benny leans in closer, nearly obscuring Ethan's view of the game, and earning an annoyed huff from his friend.

"Huh? Does that happen every time?" Benny asks, jabbing his finger at the ghosted elephant, and making the computer monitor wiggle just a little from the impact.

Ethan's scent is making him a little dizzy, and just a little reckless. A light bulb goes off in his head, thankfully not literally, and he wonders if this is what it's like for Rory, Erica and Sarah every time they get a whiff of someone's blood.

"Yes." Ethan's voice is tense, and he tries to edge around Benny's head so that he can see the computer monitor.

In the meantime, elephant after elephant is sent to a spiky grave, because Ethan can't see what he's doing, and Benny _almost_ feels sorry for being the cause of all of those tiny elephant deaths, but he's enjoying the little sounds of annoyance that his friend's making, the feel of Ethan's breath, hot and tickling, on the back of his neck, and the now overwhelming scent that's coming off of the other teen.

It's a rather heady mixture, and Benny thinks that maybe he's addicted. He thinks that maybe he's like one of those people who, after taking their first hit of heroin, is addicted to the drug for life, which, in the case of heroin addicts, from what Benny remembers reading about in health class (or maybe he'd watched a video, or seen it in a commercial, or maybe it was in a movie...), isn't long. He hopes that his addiction to Ethan, or whatever this is that's going on with him, won't lead him to an early death.

Ethan shoves him, sending him sprawling on his ass. He spares Benny a brief smirk, and then turns his attention back to the elephant game, using his foot to keep Benny down. It's a rather effective method as Ethan's foot does not smell as enticing as the rest of him does.

Benny frowns at that train of thought and blinks at the possible implications. Maybe he _is_ a vampire, and is only just coming to that realization now. His nose wrinkles when Ethan's socked foot brushes against it, and he pushes it away with a grunt that earns him a scowl, and another dead elephant. Benny feels as though he's won something then, though he has no idea what. It's bizarre, and he doesn't fully understand what is going on with him, and the insane - it has to be insane, because there is no other word for it - urge he has to kiss Ethan.

Ethan's foot is still in his face, but his concentration is totally on the game right now, and Benny leans away from his best friend's foot, because, while the rest of Ethan smells pretty darn amazing (for a guy) his feet do not. Or maybe it's the sock that smells bad. Benny leans a little closer, takes a cautious whiff of the sock, and grimaces. Experimenting, he takes another sniff, and then, in a deft move that even he hadn't foreseen coming, he plucks the sock off of Ethan's foot, and drags the boy's foot toward his nose and takes a good, long sniff of the appendage.

"What are you doing?" Ethan's voice sounds a little panicky, and he's struggling, with both hands, to pull his foot away from Benny.

"It _was_ the sock," Benny says, voice a little awestruck, as though that explains why he's practically molesting his best friend's foot with his nose.

Maybe he's got it wrong - he's not a vampire, but a werewolf, or some kind of half-dog, half-human hybrid. Or, maybe Ethan's been hit with some kind of...sex pollen, or...wait, no, no, no, _not _sex.

"What the-?" Ethan's voice trails off, and he's got a look of horror on his face as he looks down at Benny.

Tiny elephants are dying left and right as the game continues on without him. Their little ghosts being reincarnated almost as soon as they're dying. It's rather mesmerizing. Almost as mesmerizing as Ethan's eyes and lips - the way they're parted, showing off teeth and tongue - and blushing cheeks are.

"Uh..." Benny points a trembling hand toward the computer monitor, the other is still clutching Ethan's foot. "Your tiny elephants are dying," he says, helpfully.

Ethan gives him a flustered look, eyebrows scrunching together and eyes darkening slightly. He licks his lips and his breath seems to hitch, and instead of turning his attention back to the game, back to the poor dying elephants, his focus is solely on Benny.

He bends toward Benny, lips pursed, the tip of his tongue sticking out like he's some kind of lizard-man. Benny stops breathing, clutches Ethan's foot to his chest as though it is a life preserver and he's drowning in an ocean.

_An ocean filled with the ghosts of teeny tiny elephants, _he thinks giddily, black dots dancing around in front of his eyes.

"Breathe, Benny," Ethan says, and he's inches from Benny's face, a look of concern fixed firmly in place. The game has been forgotten, though Benny can still see the elephants, stoically marching to their premature deaths. It's almost sad, and it's funny at the same time.

Benny laughs, an abrupt sound that's more like a bark than anything else. Ethan's face smooths out into a look of relief and Benny, reluctantly, releases his best friend's foot, though, and he has no idea why or what or how or even if those are the right kinds of questions to be running around in his mind right now, he surges upward, closing the gap between him and Ethan, and kisses the other boy.

At first they're both too startled to do anything. Lips touch. There's a spark of something, maybe static electricity, because Ethan's room is carpeted and Benny's wearing socks and corduroy pants, they're very conducive to static electricity (he knows this from experience - a lot of experience). An elephant falls to its death and another falls to the starting platform to take its place, living for a split second before it plummets down toward a bed of upturned spikes - like it's being blown forward by an invisible wind.

Benny feels a little like that tiny elephant right now, being pushed forward by some invisible force as he fists Ethan's shirt, pulls the boy closer, until he's tumbling out of his wheely chair, falling onto the floor beside Benny. He feels Ethan's lips part beneath the onslaught of his own as he pushes forward, straddling the other boy, his body acting on its own accord. There's a burst of flavors, and Benny's eyes widen as his tongue explodes with a multitude of flavors - fruity and chocolatey and something spicy, a mixture of cloves and cinnamon.

Ethan's eyes are wide, slightly panicky, but his hands, his hands are moving across Benny's back, up beneath his shirt, deft fingers touch and explore Benny's abs and his chest, and Benny swallows a moan. Ethan's breath hitches, and he groans when Benny deepens the kiss, his mind short circuits shortly after that, and Benny loses control of the kiss, of his hands, of the entire mind-boggling situation.

Tiny elephants keep falling to their deaths, soldiering on in the absence of their gamer who is now earnestly kissing his best friend. Spots flash in the back of Benny's eyes, and he realizes, belatedly, and unhappily, that he needs to breathe. That Ethan probably needs to breathe too.

He pulls away, or tries to, Ethan pulls him back down, keeping their mouths locked, makes a noise that's halfway between a grunt and a moan. Whatever it is, it hits Benny right in the groin and he gasps for air, breathes in Ethan, and the scent of his friend is driving him wild.

"Need to breathe," Benny manages to push the words out between them.

They're both dizzy, blinking into each others eyes, pupils wide, lips swollen and pink. Benny rolls off of Ethan, but keeps a hand fisted in Ethan's shirt. Ethan's got a hand, fingers spread wide, on Benny's stomach.

"What was that?" Ethan's voice is whisper soft, slightly awed.

"You smell good," Benny says, and the words come out slurred, like he's drunk, and maybe he is. Drunk on Ethan.

Elephants keep falling to their deaths, and Benny feels kind of bad for them, wonders if they should hold a memorial for all of the senseless death that he's caused. Once they've caught their breaths of course. Until he'd come along, Ethan had been doing fairly well. Or, at least that's what Benny had surmised when he'd walked in on Ethan thirty, maybe forty-five minutes, or more, ago.

"Huh..." Ethan taps his fingers against Benny's ribcage. It doesn't tickle, though it does make Benny shiver.

Benny turns his face toward Ethan, there's a small, thoughtful smile gracing his best friend's plumped lips. "What?"

"The man at the drugstore did say that this cologne was really potent, that I should use it sparingly," Ethan says with a shrug. "I guess he was right."

Benny narrows his eyes at his best friend, watches one, two, three elephants fall to their deaths. The thoughtful smile has transformed into a smirk, and Benny sinks back to the floor and shakes his head.

"This was meant for Sarah," he guesses, voice dull. He's embarrassed, and a little out of his mind with jealousy, because he'd enjoyed kissing Ethan, enjoyed the way the boy's fingers felt...the way they feel...moving against his skin, calloused thumb brushing across his ribcage. His heart skips a beat, and then another, and air rushes from his lungs when he tries to pull away from Ethan, only to be held in place, firmly as the other boy grips his arm.

He turns his eyes toward Ethan, who is shaking his head. "No. Not for Sarah," he says slowly, pointedly, Benny thinks, and Ethan's not meeting Benny's eyes, he's watching elephants march to their deaths.

The elephant deaths are quick, but there's nothing quick about anything between him and Ethan, and Benny wonders when the ceiling started to spin, and why Ethan's buying potent cologne from drugstores. How long he's been doing that, and why Ethan's fingers keep tapping a steady, maddening rhythm along his ribs.

"Wh-" Benny's question is stolen by Ethan's lips, Ethan's hands, Ethan's fingers, and the elephants keep dying, but Benny's no longer paying attention to them, to the inane song that keeps playing in the background. It's only mildly annoying. Benny's heard worse, knows songs that could be used in torture. Ethan's fingers, his lips, his tongue, are a slow torture, and still the elephants keep falling, and Benny thinks maybe he's going to die from loss of air - asphyxiation - happiness, or some combination thereof.

His lungs, lips...toes...are on fire. He feels like he's been electrocuted, but it doesn't hurt, and he's okay with the lack of oxygen to the brain, with the idea that, if Ethan doesn't let him breathe soon, he'll suffer brain damage. He thinks that maybe he's already brain damaged, and his toes curl, back arches, when Ethan digs his fingers into his side in a way that doesn't tickle as much as it electrifies, makes his synapses fire all at once, and his eyes roll to the back of his head. He doesn't lose consciousness, can still see, over Ethan's dark head of hair, the elephants obediently march to their deaths as the game goes on and on and Benny doesn't remember how to breathe anymore when Ethan finally sits up and relinquishes his mouth.

There's a smug look on Ethan's face. His lips are stretched wide, revealing teeth that seem to sparkle in the now dim light - the sun is just beginning to set - eyes dark and at half mast, he seems to be drinking in the sight of Benny. Liking what he sees.

Benny imagines that he can see himself, reflected in Ethan's eyes - goofy, gobsmacked grin in place, eyes glazed, face flushed. He's half-drunk, out of his mind, and things are never going to be the same again, because, now that he's gotten a taste of his best friend there's no going back. Like a bear, or a shark, or any animal that's tasted human flesh will always go back for more.

Ethan turns around, and Benny reaches for him, even as he pulls away. For a moment he thinks that maybe he's dreamed all of this, that he's lying in a forest, concussed, or maybe just the school hallway, accidentally knocked unconscious by an over exuberant Rory rounding the corner at superhuman speeds. He moans, pathetically, and pouts, because this is too cruel for his mind to conjure up.

"Just going to pause the game," Ethan promises half a heartbeat later, hand still somehow pressed to Benny's stomach. He's looking longingly at the game, though, and Benny sighs, knows that, if he doesn't let Ethan finish it out the game, the dead and dying elephants will linger over the both of them - accusing, haunting, beckoning.

"Go, finish the game," Benny says through lips that have gone tingly numb. He waves a hand in the direction of the game.

"There are thirty different stages," Ethan says, pinning Benny with a look that's filled with two different kinds of longing.

Smiling, Benny sits up, and nods toward the game. "I can wait." He feels betrayed by his runaway mouth, his hand which keeps motioning toward the game where the elephants keep dying.

Ethan gives him one last, searching look, and, with a tight grin, he returns to the game. Benny watches from his position on the floor, stomach clenching whenever Ethan loses an elephant to the spikes or some other foolish move, because he's only on level fifteen and the sun has already set. He knows he can probably stay for dinner, but it's a school night, and he doubts that he can spend the night, not that he would if he could. It's too dangerous to do that now he's tasted Ethan.

"C'mon," Benny says, stomach growling, when Ethan loses another elephant because he's not caught onto the latest trick that he needs to perform to complete this particular stage of the game.

Ethan's not listening, barely acknowledges his mother when she calls them for dinner. It's Benny who reaches around Ethan, clicks the pause on the game, and sidesteps Ethan's poorly aimed slap.

"Just five more levels," he whines.

"You can't win this game on an empty stomach," Benny reasons, and then he presses a kiss to Ethan's cheek - a promise of more to come - smiling when the other boy blushes and touches the place on his cheek where Benny's lips have been.

Ethan nods, and he follows Benny out of his room and down the stairs, as though in a trance. Jane gives them odd looks throughout dinner, and Benny wonders if she knows, has to concede that she _does_ know when she pats him on the back, and whispers, "It's about time," giving him a wink as he and Ethan finish washing and drying the dishes and head up the stairs to finish the game.

By the time that Ethan lets out a triumphant whoop, a look of pure ecstasy on his face, an hour has passed, and the only light in Ethan's room is coming from the computer screen. It bathes the boy in an eerie white glow that makes Benny's heart clench and then pound like a jackhammer in his chest.

There's a congratulatory screen, and though Benny thinks that the stats are pretty bad - something like a couple thousand elephant deaths, and an absurd amount of time - none of that matters, because Ethan has beaten the game, and now it's time to celebrate.

Swallowing, Benny takes Ethan's face between his hands, and then they kiss. It's slow, and somehow they're sharing Ethan's wheely chair. There's a shower of fireworks behind his eyes, and he's only dimly aware of the way that Ethan smells right now.

* * *

Reviews would be awesome.


End file.
